Can I get some advice on expressing and alcohol?

[mammaemma]

Not to sound like an alcoholic but I have a wedding to got to and have only expressed one bottle a day of breastmilk so far. (DD is a month old). Can anyone advise on drinking and expressing? If I want to go out for the afternoon and early evening and have my first post pregnancy drinky poos what are the rules? How many hours after finishing drinking would I need to express enough milk for ?
Obviously if its all to dangerous I just won't drink but I am curious of the rules of drinking and breastfeeding.
Thanks in advance

By the way the wedding is in 5 weeks time so I am not planning to do it just yet...

Alcohol goes through your milk at approx the same rate as through your blood so around one unit per hour.

There is no need to express unless you will get uncomfortable or want some to give to your baby on another occasion.

If you want your milk to be free of alcohol, wait approx one hour per unit of alcohol before expressing or breastfeeding. The alcohol will leave your breastmilk at the same rate it leaves the rest of your body.

So say if you drank 4 small glasses of wine you would be alcohol free again in about 4 hours time, after stopping drinking.

If you need to express to keep up your supply, while at the wedding, don't give this milk to the baby.

HTH, enjoy yourself.

tiktok will be on later to tell you not to worry about alcohol in your milk anyway

I donated breastmilk and the woman who runs the clinic told me 1 hour for 1 unit - so all I would do was "pump and dump" when I got home and then I was good to go the next day -
To be fair, ~I never drank that much anyway when I was BF, but at least I could have some champagne and 1 or 2 glasses of wine after dinner - TBH - was too tired to drink too much anyway.

coolmama you would be okay the next day anyway as once the alcohol leaves your body it no longer affecst your milk

Absolutely - but I was just a bit more as I was also donating milk at the time and the babies that get that milk are generally in a very vulnerable state so I just wanted to make sure that my milk was absolutely "clean" - DS got whatever was going

Another question... thanks for the advice so far !!.. Will it affect my milk supply seeming as I won't have fed for that afternoon and evening? Does it mean I will have problems the following day as my body will think i don't need the milk or is one day ok ?
Sorry for not knowing much but there isn't a lot of advice on this subject on the web.

I would think it would be worth expressing to keep up supply and prevent mastitis / blocked ducts. Your breastfeeding pattern is still establishing itself and I think a long gap could adversely affect supply at this early stage, plus I think you may underestimate how uncomfortable you will get if you miss a feed or two.

It's good that you are already used to expressing so you have a lot of flexibility here.

You might get achey boobs, or they may leak a bit at normal feeding time, but in the long run it shouldn't affect your supply

You might want to defer to Tiktok if she comes on later, but I had enough milk for the neighbourhood, so skipping one feed was very uncomfortable for me and I would leak a bit, but did not affect my supply at all - I would think that even if it had a small effect, a few days of feeding your lo would sort that out - however, I would shout for Tiktok just to check.

Agree with most of the stuff here - leaving a one-off gap of a few hours won't affect your supply more than a small amount and only v. temporarily, and prob will do no more than make you a bit uncomfortable.

4 hours for 4 drinks is only correct if you drink one unit per hour, waiting for drink 1 to be totally processed before you have drink 2 and so on. If you have your drinks more closely together you will be alcohol free sooner.

I went out the other weekend and had to get up in the night to express as my breasts felt that they were going to explode and dd was fast asleep. This surprised me as I'm mixed feeding and didn't think that my supply was that great(long story on other threads).